The versatile and talented director David Lowery (“A Ghost Story,” “The Old Man & the Gun,” “The Green Knight”) and the requisite army of technical wizards have delivered one of the most visually stunning trips to Neverland ever recorded on film, featuring a cast of gifted young actors and reliable veterans who seem born to the roles.

Not an easy film to watch. Yet there is a certain fascination which develops. [10 Sep 1993, p.40]

Exactly the kind of documentary we all want to have made about ourselves, in which it is revealed that we are funny, smart, beloved, the trusted confidant of famous people.

The story is determined to be colorful and melodramatic, like a soap opera where the characters suffer in ways that look intriguing.

Lohman in particular is effective; I learn to my astonishment that she's 24, but here she plays a 15-year-old with all the tentative love and sudden vulnerability that the role requires, when your dad is a whacko confidence man.

We forgive Elephant its conceits because it’s such a joy to observe the rituals of these incredible, amazing creatures.

Writer/director Carey clearly has some talent, and she and Plaza deserve credit for never pulling their comedic punches. They’re all in. Problem is, it’s mostly a bluff.

Apart from the other good things in Tightrope, I admire it for taking chances; Clint Eastwood can get rich making Dirty Harry movies, but he continues to change and experiment, and that makes him the most interesting of the box-office megastars.

The race is more like a private poker game held upstairs in somebody's suite during the World Series of Poker.

What I liked was a horror movie that was scaring me with ideas and gore, instead of simply with gore.

A little more zip, and Hero might really have worked. It has all the ingredients for a terrific entertainment, but it lingers over the kinds of details that belong in a different kind of movie.

Trucker sets out on a difficult and tricky path, and doesn't put a foot wrong.

I admired the movie. It is made with quiet competence, and will remind some viewers of the Hitchcock who made “The Thirty-Nine Steps” and “Foreign Correspondent.”

Cat People moves back and forth between its mythic and realistic levels, held together primarily by the strength of Kinski's performance and John Heard's obsession. Kinski is something. She never overacts in this movie, never steps wrong, never seems ridiculous; she just steps onscreen and convincingly underplays a leopard. Heard also is good.

The Karate Kid was one of the nice surprises of 1984 -- an exciting, sweet-tempered, heart-warming story with one of the most interesting friendships in a long time.

Choppy at times and indulging in familiar dog-movie scenarios on a steady basis, “Dog” isn’t going to enter any annual conversations about the best canine films of all time, but Lulu is basically a good girl and Briggs is basically a good guy, and we’re glad they were given the high-concept road trip adventure they deserve.

The Big Chill is a splendid technical exercise. It has all the right moves. It knows all the right words. Its characters have all the right clothes, expressions, fears, lusts and ambitions. But there's no payoff and it doesn't lead anywhere. I thought at first that was a weakness of the movie. There also is the possibility that it's the movie's message.

It seems aimed at people who loved "Pulp Fiction'' and have strong stomachs. Like it or hate it (or both), you have to admire its skill, and the over-the-top virtuosity of Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland as the girl and the wolf.

It confronts the relationship between Fonda and Voight with unusual frankness -- and with emotional tenderness and subtlety that is, if anything, even harder to portray.

Director Showalter (who mined similar territory in “The Big Sick,” one of the best movies of 2017) and screenwriters David Marshall Grant and Dan Savage display a deft touch for blending wry humor with heartfelt drama, and Jim Parsons and Ben Aldridge have a natural and comfortable chemistry in a story that hits a lot of familiar notes but contains some creatively clever devices while packing, yes, a whole lot of heart.

Vulgarity is a very tricky thing to handle in a comedy; tone is everything, and the makers of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" have an absolute gift for taking potentially funny situations and turning them into general embarrassment. They're tone-deaf.

Star Maps is not, to be sure, boring. But it is wildly unfocused.

Its hero upstages anything the plot can possibly come up with.

Never comes alive.

Has too much docudrama and not enough soul.

The movie is both interesting and unsatisfying. The Keitel performance is over the top, inviting us to side with Furtwangler simply because his interrogator is so vile.

Sometimes we feel as if the film careens from one colorful event to another without respite, but sometimes it must have seemed to Frida Kahlo as if her life did, too.

It is a brave experiment, based on life and using actors who play themselves, but it buys into the whole false notion that artists are somehow too brilliant to be sober.